Category: observations

history ideas observations pragmatic historian preservation work in progress

Embodied Energy Is Key to the Grand Unified Theory of Preservation

By Mary | by Mary

Big, complex ideas take a significant amount of thought. Such is the case with the Grand Unified Theory of Preservation I’ve been working on for years. The thinking has continued since I shared the post I wrote about the theory a couple of weeks ago on this blog. Friend and history colleague David Grabitske sparked fresh thinking about the theory with a question he left on LinkedIn: “Where does Language Preservation fit? Just curious.“ Yes,…

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observations

Did You Know That Flour Is Raw?

By Mary | by Mary

I recently found out I’m allergic to yeast, both brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast. Not gluten, not wheat, which is great, but pretty much everything made of wheat is likely to have yeast in it. That means lots of careful label reading. Did you know saltine crackers and numerous “flat” breads have yeast in them? Why? They’re flat. Yeast fluffs up baked goods. There doesn’t seem to be a need to add yeast to these…

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Mask Culture

By Mary | by Mary

We are now over 6 months, 204,000 deaths, and 7.06 million cases into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Those are sobering statistics for a sobering worldwide event. While this 6 months has felt like about 10 years in terms of the stress we have been under, it’s a relatively short amount of time to create some major habit shifts. It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a new habit,…

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Pandemic Woes: I Miss the Library

By Mary | by Mary

This pandemic is a drag. When we first went into lock-down in March, which meant closing the museum I run, figuring out how to work from home, getting used to Zoom meetings, and dealing with shortages at grocery stores, there was such a flurry of new activity that it was difficult to reflect on all that was happening. In addition, we had to get used to masks and social distancing, including avoiding stores and other…

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ideas observations pragmatic historian thought fodder

Small Town Progressive

By Mary | by Mary

I live in a small town with a population of under 10,000 people. We’re often referred to as rural, and our county is most assuredly rural. When it comes to politics, our small town and rural county are true-to-type, with a majority of voters supporting conservative candidates in the last two presidential elections. In 2012, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were on the ticket, Minnesota as a state chose Obama with 52.65% of the…

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